The Troubled Utopias of Ursula K. Le Guin
Le Guin’s “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” ultimately seems to at once embody and expose the limits of utopian thinking.
Northrop Frye
Four Intriguing Ideas from Northrop Frye’s Anatomy of Criticism
With five new critical studies of Northrop Frye hitting the bookstores this year, 2015 is turning out to be Frye’s year. Frye was one of the 20th century masters of myth criticism: if you’re at all interested in archetypes, the hero’s journey, or the intersection of religion and literature, Frye is the writer for you….
Harold Bloom’s Song of Self
Here’s the story of my first and only encounter with Harold Bloom. It was the first week of a new semester, my last semester of graduate school, and I was waiting in a stuffy seminar room packed with sharply dressed undergraduates. The luckiest students had secured seats around the grand conference table while the rest of…